“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
“For being with her in the first place? Because that you really should be sorry for.”
“Not that.”
“Well nothing else is your fault, and I kind of agreed to her deal anyway.”
Natalie nodded.
“Are we good?” Evie said. “You and me? This isn’t too weird or anything?”
“Of course we are.”
Evie nodded, relieved, because that was all that really mattered. She stopped stirring for a moment, and tried the sauce again. It was a tomato one for pasta. It wasn’t too salty, but she wasn’t sure it wasn’t too bland either. She held the spoon out the Natalie. “Is this really okay?”
“The sauce?”
“Of course.”
“So you’re concentrating on the important things now?” Natalie said.
Evie grinned. “I am.”
Natalie tasted. “It’s fine. It’s good. What’s the herbs?”
“Tarragon.”
“Oh.”
“Too weird?”
“Not at all, I just hadn’t… It’s nice.”
“Good,” Evie said, and went back to stirring. The sauce was almost ready. It was thickening, enough it would stick or burn if it sat on the stove. “There is something else, too,” she said. “Just while I think of it. Something a bit weird. Meredith thinks we have lots in common. Her and me, apparently. I don’t get why?”
“Did she mean me?”
“Perhaps. I’m not sure.”
“That you’ve both been involved with me?”
“I suppose,” Evie said. “Yeah, maybe just that.”
“Or that you’re both confrontational and smart and pushy?”
Evie considered. “Is she, um… self-aware enough to notice that?”
Natalie looked at Evie for a moment, her face expressionless.
“Don’t say it,” Evie said.
“Say what.”
“That I am, or I’m not self-aware either, or something.”
“I didn’t say a thing.”
“Good,” Evie said. “Very wise. And Meredith? Is she?”
Natalie didn’t answer. She just stood there smiling.
Evie grinned back, and decided the sauce had thickened enough. She switched off the stove, and tipped the cooked pasta from its saucepan into a colander in the sink. “Go get changed if you want to,” she said. “It’s ready.”
“I’m fine.”
“Go change anyway. Or you’ll get up halfway through dinner worried you’ll splash sauce on your clothes.”
“I won’t.”
“Just do it,” Evie said. “I mean it. I’m done arguing with important law firm partners for today.”
Natalie smiled, and then kissed Evie quickly, and then went down the hall to the bedroom.
“And open wine too,” Evie shouted. Natalie didn’t answer, but Evie thought she’d probably heard.
Evie mixed the drained pasta into the sauce, and got cutlery from the drawer, and then pushed enough of her books to one side that there was room for them both to sit at the table. Natalie was taking her time, probably removing her makeup or something as well as getting changed, so Evie sat down to wait. She didn’t mind the extra few minutes, since the sauce was hot enough it would stay warm, and wasn’t that special anyway. Not special enough to worry if it cooled a little.
Evie sat, and thought, and decided this was nice. That being like this with Natalie made her happy. Natalie was good for her, she thought, and she hoped she was for Natalie too. She thought she was, and that they suited one another well. Even if dealing with Meredith was sometimes a little odd.
25: Natalie
Evie’s lectures finished and her exams began, and she became slightly frantic and sleepless and intensely absorbed, everything that Natalie had expected her to become. She slept odd hours. She didn’t go outside for days on end. She did nothing for two weeks but prepare for exams, and go to exams, and came home again to begin studying for the next one. She studied intensely. She filled the apartment with post-it notes, and printed-out law reports, and seemed to have half the law library’s books sitting on the kitchen table. She was drinking too much coffee, and smoking too much as well. She was chain-smoking so often that her laptop spent whole hours sitting next to the stove, underneath the kitchen extractor fan. In-between times she apologised to Natalie for all the disruption.
For two weeks Evie did nothing but prepare for exams, and sit exams, and plan for her next exam, and then, quite suddenly, it was over. One day Evie had her last exam, and suddenly she was finished. Suddenly the intensity of it all disappeared.
Evie seemed to have done well, Natalie thought, or at least, she had done tolerably. She was assuming from how Evie had been, mostly calm throughout the whole process. Evie hadn’t panicked at any point, as far as Natalie had seen, or given up and refused to get out of bed, and she didn’t spent the week after her last exam in tears, and those all had to be good signs. Natalie asked how Evie thought she’d done, and Evie said fine, she supposed, but she needed to wait for her results. Although, she said, after a moment’s reflection, that what she thought might not actually mean very much, she supposed, because of course she would think she’d done okay. Natalie wasn’t sure about that. She tried to be reassuring. Evie would know if it had been a disaster, she said. “Probably,” Evie said, and that was all. She didn’t seem to want to discuss it. After a few tries, Natalie realized why. Evie was being superstitious. Evie didn’t want to talk, or guess, or say anything particular about how things had gone, because she had some vague sense of causing herself bad luck. Natalie was surprised, since Evie had never seemed worried by things like that before, but it made sense with something this important.
Evie seemed exhausted, even several hours after the exam. She seemed completely drained. She was talking slowly, and barely moving. She wasn’t animated the way she usually was. She sat on the couch, curled up into herself, looking out the windows at the city’s lights. After a while she said she felt quite odd, weirdly empty and directionless, after months of focusing everything on her exams. Natalie understood, and said that she did. She’d felt something of sort when she was a student, and also, more recently, had felt the same way when big cases finally came to court.
“We should go out,” Natalie said, but Evie shook her head and said she was sorry, but she didn’t think she could stand people just yet. Natalie said that was fine, and Evie asked if she minded, and Natalie said, “Not at all.”
Evie sat quietly, and looked at the lights, and after a while asked if they could go to bed. They did, and had sex, and that seemed to help, which Natalie assumed Evie had intended.
The next evening, Natalie came home and found Evie had tidied up in the kitchen. The books on the table were gone, and the post-its had disappeared too. Both had been around so long Natalie had almost stopped noticing them. The books were gone, but Evie was at the table, with her laptop, although now she was fiddling with her CV and writing out answers to practice interview questions.
Suddenly Evie needed a job, Natalie thought, and wondered if she should offer to help.
Evie had been applying for positions, but as far as Natalie knew nothing had happened yet. It probably wouldn’t for a while, Natalie suspected. The big firms would all be short-listing for the time being, but not making decisions until the exam results were out. A very few of Evie’s class, the ones who’d already done internships, and had the best marks, they might be being recruited now, but the rest would just have to wait.
Evie waited, and the longer she did, the more Natalie wanted to help.
Evie kept changing her CV, at first just to say she’d finished her degree, as far as Natalie could see, but then she kept on changing it, adding things and swapping words and trying to make it perfect. She wrote a cover letter, and supporting letter, and started adding explanations of all her courses. She took three days on it without really seeming to be happy with what sh
e had, complaining that all she was doing really was changing the font.
She spent three days, then said to Natalie one evening, sounding dispirited, “I don’t actually know what I’m doing with this.”
“With job applications?”
“Yep. And the CV. With all of it. It’s completely different to what I was doing until now.”
“I imagine,” Natalie said, and kissed her quickly. “Poor you. Do you want some help?”
“Fuck yes,” Evie said, sounding relieved. “Please. Heaps.”
“Let me make some calls for you.”
“What?” Evie said. “Um, no. Not that kind of help.”
“Then what?”
“I’m not sure,” Evie said. “Just, not like that. Don’t get me a job, I suppose, tell me how to get a job myself instead.”
“Like teaching you to fish?”
Evie looked up. “What?”
“Never mind. Just let me make some calls. Please? That’s the easiest way to find you something.”
Evie shook her head.
“It’s how it’s done,” Natalie said. “It’s what everyone does. You use what advantages you have.”
“Did you?”
Natalie hesitated. “Well no, but…”
“Because how it was all so completely different way, way back then?”
Natalie was tempted to glare. “No,” she said. “Because I didn’t know anyone. I had no-one to help. You do, though, so you should let me.”
“Still nope,” Evie said. “Please. Just tell me what to do. Instead of trying to actually do things for me.”
“Tell you?” Natalie said. “You’re sure? It won’t be too… bossy?”
“Tell away.”
Natalie thought, wondering how blunt to be, and how much Evie really wanted to hear. Evie deserved at least the help she would give any of her juniors, Natalie decided. Or at least, help until she got upset.
“Stop smoking,” Natalie said. “That’s the biggest thing.”
Evie seemed surprised. “Um, what?”
“It counts against you. So stop. At least until you’re accepted somewhere.”
“But I have mints,” Evie said. “I’m careful about that. And I body spray myself afterwards...”
“And you still smell a little of it anyway. Your hair, mostly, but your hands and clothes too.”
“Oh,” Evie said, seeming dismayed. She sniffed her hand, then some of her hair. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry,” Natalie said. “But it’s actually obvious. I mean, it is to anyone who thinks to notice.”
“Really?”
Natalie smiled, and kissed her. “I’m sorry. It is.”
“Who’s it obvious to?” Evie said, sounding almost suspicious. “People who’ve quit?”
“I suppose so. To anyone, really.”
“To you?” Evie said.
Evie sounded strange, a little too intense, and Natalie wasn’t completely sure why. She looked at Evie for a moment, wondering if she’d said too much. Wondering whether giving unforeseen advice about Evie’s smoking had been entirely wise.
“Well, yes,” Natalie said, slightly wary. “I suppose, in a job interview, then yes, I’d notice.”
“Because you don’t like the smell?”
“Not because of that.”
“Because it makes you want to smoke again too?”
Natalie didn’t quite understand what Evie was getting at. It felt like they were suddenly talking about more than it first seemed. “What’s wrong,” Natalie said, a little defensively. “You asked me to tell you what to do.”
“Yes, I did,” Evie said. “I’m sorry, I just… Are you bothered that I smoke?”
“No,” Natalie said. “Of course not. I told you I don’t care.”
“But in an interview you would?”
“I think I would,” Natalie said, uncertainly. “The firm’s on the twentieth floor. I’d wonder how much productive time you’d be losing if you were taking a cigarette break downstairs every hour.”
“Oh,” Evie said. “Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I did. I would. And a selection committee will too.”
Evie nodded. She seemed to still be thinking.
“What’s wrong?” Natalie said, apprehensively.
Evie shook her head.
“Something’s wrong,” Natalie said. “Could you tell me what it is?”
“It’s nothing. Nothing really. Just something I’d been wondering about.”
“If I minded you smoking?”
Evie shrugged.
“I don’t,” Natalie said. “If you wondered…”
“I know,” Evie said. “Forget it, I was wrong.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was wrong. Just go on. Tell me what else I should know.”
“Are you sure?” Natalie said. “I mean, is that wise? We might disagree…”
“Um yep. I’m fine. Just tell me. Please.”
Natalie hesitated for a moment, wondering how honest to be. “Well, if I’m being judgemental anyway, maybe the pot needs reconsidering too…”
“But you told me you don’t mind about that,” Evie said. She seemed quite upset, as if Natalie was suddenly ambushing her with complaints.
“I don’t mind,” Natalie said. “I promise I don’t. But an employer might, is all.”
“No,” Evie said. “How would they know? I mean, I don’t actually smoke weed in job interviews…”
“They might drug test new employees. All new employees.”
“Oh,” Evie said, suddenly subdued. “Oh, fuck. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m sure it’s unlikely,” Natalie said, with no real idea if it was true. She had never needed to know, and had never thought about it before. She had no idea what the requirements for graduates were now.
“Yeah,” Evie said. “Well, I guess I’m not interviewing anywhere like that then. Never mind.”
“It’s unlikely they would,” Natalie said again.
“Maybe.”
“I suppose you could stop for a while, if you wanted to.”
Evie shook her head. “It’s too late now. For drug tests, I mean. It takes weeks to leave your system, as far as I know. So if anyone asks, I’ll just have to turn them down.”
“Oh,” Natalie said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Yeah,” Evie said, and shrugged. “Well, it’s probably unlikely.”
“I’m still sorry.”
Evie smiled, slightly sadly. “Don’t be, it isn’t you. Not unless you made it some kind of policy, I mean. I just hadn’t thought of it until now, that’s all.”
“It’s a shame.”
“Nah, it doesn’t matter.”
Natalie hugged Evie, and smelled her smoky hair, and wondered if she was being too truthful, whether encouragement might not be better than unreserved honestly. It was tricky to know the right balance, she thought. She wanted to be supportive, but helpful as well.
“Well anyway,” Evie said. “Perhaps we should get back to useful advice, since until I get an interview, none of this is really important…”
“No, I suppose not,” Natalie said. “What kind of advice? I don’t really know how useful I am.”
“I don’t know,” Evie said, looking at her laptop screen. “Is there anything particular I should have on my CV? Or anything special to say on the phone? Things like that, for before the actual interview. Things to make sure I get one.”
Natalie thought.
“Fonts?” Evie said. “What order I put things. Anything?”
“I think the interview counts more.”
“People have all these theories about what different fonts mean…”
“Honestly? As far as I know they make piles of applications by the final-year marks and throw most of them away before they even notice the font…”
Evie looked a bit horrified.
“Oh,” Natalie said. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I know that sounds awful just
to say it like that…”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“I thought you knew.”
“Well, people talk. One of the lecturers likes scaring us.” Evie sighed. “It seems kind of different hearing it from you.”
“I’m sorry,” Natalie said. “I think it’s less awful once you’ve been picked, though. It feels like a good thing then, if that helps at all…”
“I suppose,” Evie said.
“And you will be picked,” Natalie said quickly, worried she’d said the wrong thing. “You’ll make it to interviews. I’m sure of that. In fact, I’m sure you already have, and they just haven’t told you yet. That’s why I was going on about smoking…”
“Oh,” Evie said, and nodded, and seemed a little happier. “Really?”
“Really. I promise.”
Evie seemed to think. “How sure are you?”
“Very.”
“No, I mean, actually how sure? Do you know something particular?”
Natalie was surprised. “Of course not,” she said. “I’m just… being confident in you.”
Evie leaned back a little, thinking again. She was looking at Natalie quite carefully.
“You don’t believe me?” Natalie said, taken aback.
“I don’t know,” Evie said. “I have no idea if I should.”
Natalie was a little hurt, although she could almost understand why Evie might be wondering. She hoped it was only wondering, momentary suspicions, and nothing worse. She decided to be reasonable, and try and talk Evie through this. “Believe me,” Natalie said. “Please?”
Evie didn’t answer.
Natalie sighed. Reasonable would keep this calm, she thought. Reasonable was best right now. “Well for one thing,” she said. “How would I know about other firms? You applied other places, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” Evie said. “And I don’t know how you’d know. You might, mightn’t you? You must know people.”
“I do,” Natalie said. “Of course I do. But I just told you that I haven’t tried to find out. I haven’t, I promise you. I hadn’t even thought of it until right now.”
Evie didn’t answer.
“I left it completely alone,” Natalie said. “Like you wanted me to.”
Evie's Job Page 46
